Just experienced weird design when fire broke out in NPC home some days ago. I traveled to one NPC home at Mt. Komorebi and walked outside far away to join the festival at public area. Later, an alert message said fire broke out. Nothing was happening at the festival. Then, I realized the fire broke out in a far away NPC home.
NPCs escaped their home and no one was going to put off the fire. Waited many minutes but fire fighter didn't arrive. The fire kept burning and not letting me to leave the scene. It just made me to load an early save and discard all my effort during the festival.
I think I found a solution for this problem! The exact thing that has been described in this thread happened to me just now. My sim went to a lot, didn't get a chance to knock at the door, a fire started and my sim couldn't call the firefighters or do literally anything except freaking out.
By using the cheat "fire.toggle false" new fires couldn't start and my sim was finally able to go home after the fires went out.
